Right now, I am placing fairly well but Google Maps is destroying any hits. I'm at the #3 spot for this local keyword phrase in my country (profession city). According to Webmaster Tools, I am getting a decent amount of impressions on Google, yesterday I got for example 880 impressions yet I only got one click. It is the same every day, tons of impressions but no clicks (click rate of around 0.1%). This is despite the fact that my site is the most relevant and the title and description at least to some degree invites clicking. The problem is mainly that as soon as viewers see Google Maps on top, they don't really care what's below they just think their search phrase was crappy and try something else or give up. The top entry on the Google Maps post doesn't even work, it's bugged with double .tdls. So, how does one get ahead of Google Maps? I realize I'm not just below it yet but the site is fairly new and the competition isn't too great so I should be able to deal with that. The Google Maps link it prints out has PR0 but what does it take to get ahead of them? Has anyone successfully done it?
I'm not on Google Maps nor do I want to be as I don't have a local business. What I want to is to end up higher than Google Maps on the normal SERP.
It is possible to be on Google Maps without a pin at the exact business location - this is for mobile business etc that have a service area. It is displayed as a circle encompassing your area covered so you can just set the centre of your circle as the city center. I havent done this myself, but I remember there definitely was the option to add this type of business to the map. If your keyword phrase includes a city, the search will always show the map first, so you might as well get on it so you can compete with the other map listings.
Google Maps is an inconvenience for some webmasters but for many searchers like myself, I try to find local websites, this way, the Google maps is disregarded to myself. But others may not feel this way and the maps may become a hassle.
I suppose this means it is impossible to "beat" google maps and rank higher for a local keyword than them.